Tag: GOP

I keep telling myself I should write a blog post to explain my endorsement of Ted Cruz. I keep thinking I should link a few of the excellent articles about him, and then explain my thinking on the many different items that I’ve weighed in my consideration, all of them bringing me to the conclusion that I really really want Ted Cruz to be the next President.

But you know what it is, mostly? I’m just too damned TIRED to want to have Marco Rubio as President.

I’ve been fighting against the President and the Senate and the House for more than 10 years now. My politcal involvement for more than a decade has been about stopping government from doing bad shit.

I’m just exhausted from that.

I don’t WANT to have to fight Marco on immigration. I don’t WANT to have to fight Marco on NSA wiretapping, civil rights for college students,, sugar subsidies, crony tax credits, or the millions of other things he and his cohorts will come up with to “help us”.

Why can’t we get a guy that we can fight WITH rather than AGAINST?

Imagine fighting WITH Ted Cruz to wind down mandates and subsidies, to ensure protections for innocent Americans and expanded capabilities to pursue bad guys – with proper court authorization.

Imagine having the “unknown crazy stuff” that comes up filtered through the Constitution before a solution is proposed or approved.

I don’t have the time right now to link articles and properly source my allegations. I don’t have the time to find a pretty picture for this post on my crappy blog.

I don’t have the TIME or INCLINATION to fight to get some guy elected and then have to fight against him once he’s there. You know we’ll have to do that with Rubio. How much crap has he already done that we fought against, or cheered when it didn’t happen, or should have fought against?

Can’t we just have a chance to fight to get someone elected, and then…be HAPPY once we succeed?

I’m too tired to support Marco Rubio. But for Ted Cruz, I’m ready to fight!

The amount of ugliness and snarkiness between candidates and their supporters is pretty intense. Some of that is a factor of our age and social media – we’re mean to people we don’t actually see or know. Some of it is because there’s an actual CONTEST to determine the person who will represent the GOP, and thus conservatism, for the near future.

We haven’t had that in AGES. For a huge percent of the population, we’ve never had that, not really. Much of my recollection is spotty because I wasn’t hugely into politics, but it’s how I remember things…

In 1988 – Bush was elected to continue being Reagan. Not a whole lot of philosophical battle going on.

In 1992 there was a significant battle – the Republican / populist battle was really fought between Bush and Perot. Constitutional conservatives seemed to be a complacent part of the GOP. That’s when I started paying attention to politics a bit.

In 1996, it was Dole’s turn, but no one was gonna beat Clinton

In 2000, Bush v. McCain – not a real ideological struggle. More of a battle of…whose turn is it? Which legacy wins?

In 2004 – Bush again, of course

In 2008 – it was McCain’s turn. It was a battle of campaign tactics, who was going to fight hardest because they wanted it most. Who would be the last one standing, the one who had “lost the least”.

In 2012 – Romney again was the “last one standing”. It was a bit of an ideological struggle, the not-Romney’s versus Romney, but it was also Romney’s turn.

And all along, the polls could predict what was going to happen, and we could tell which tactics were going to work and which would not – in a general sense. The voters were predictable, the candidates were predictable. It all kind of made sense and flowed along.

Now? It’s no one’s turn. It’s crazy. It’s unexpected. They’re all trying all the different campaign tactics that have been used before, and no one knows what’s really going to happen.

This is absolutely the chaos election. And it’s delightful, and horrible, and exhilarating and disgusting.

This is the time to strengthen the GOP. The mid-term elections give us a chance to slow down Obama’s march toward Progressive Utopia. We can do that by taking the Senate and strengthening the GOP In the House, and getting as many strong Conservatives elected to state offices as is possible.

By now you’ve seen NJ Libertarian’s article about Turning the Tables you’re pumped up about changing the GOP to reflect your values, you’re excited to really make something heppen! But…

That’s a lot of elections, too much to focus on, where do you start? You/we have to spend our precious time and money wisely. The first task is to get the BEST GOP Candidates through the primaries and ready to fight and win against a Democrat opponent.

We do need to get better at vetting our candidates – what are the important things to know about a GOP candidate before we put our weight behind him* and help him get elected?

How can we Learn about and Promote our candidates?

The Conservative Union, The Party of Choice, and Free Radical Network came together to formulate a plan of action. Interview the candidates ourselves and provide shorter comparison-type “meet the candidate” videos for people to view. You’ll get more information about the candidate that way than from reading a posistion paper on the internet.

We decided to come up with a few key job interview type questions – they’re applying for a sales position. They want to sell conservatism to the public and get elected in November, and then sell conservatism to their fellow Republicans and the Democrats via legislation that can serve the needs of their constituents. We need to know if they’re any good at that.

We’re not asking the standard questions about policy. We’re going around the talking points, to some deeper questions. We’re trying to find out if they can be the guy to sell Conservatism to a larger audience, to elevate our brand

The kinds of questions we will be asking:

How do you differentiate yourself from your primary competitor, and how will you, after fighting against him in a primary, change gears to pull the party together to defeat the Democrat?

How do you plan to carry that “winning GOP” strategy forward into the office?

How would you grow the GOP once in office?

What is your online presence and strategy for communicating with your constituents – talking and listening – once in office?

We’ve done two already, and the results are great – I feel like I have a feel for who these NJ Senate candidates are, MUCH more so than from a formal TV interview or an advertisement. It’s a real conversation.

This is good for the campaigns too -they can choose to direct people to them, they can take bits and pieces and use them as marketing info, we can share them with friends and family who are wondering – who are these guys, what are they like?

We can even get some good excerpts ourselves to use whether we are pushing a candidate or just pushing the conservative message

[This is where I would’ve linked an excerpt video, if video editing were part of my skillset]

To make this successful, we need your help.

Point us in the direction of candidates or even party chairs who would be good to interview

Help us get to the candidates we’re targeting and get them to agree to an interview

Watch the interviews we’ve done so far, and promote THEM, so that the concept itself gets a bit more known – beyond just G+, it’s a YouTube thing!

Sit down and interview some folks yourself, and send us the video

Create excerpt videos from the ones we already have and share them with your friends – show that there ARE GOP candidates with good things to say

Other ideas – give me your ideas, I’ll steal them and claim them for my own!!!

*I use “he” and “him” instead of “he or she” and “him or her” because it’s easier, faster, and clearer. Also I find that the people who do that, or worse sometimes use “he” and sometimes use “she” are more interested in impressing you with their gender inclusiveness than they are in communicating clearly. I don’t suffer from that pretension. You think I’m a woman hater? Come at me.

The Texas Primary – it happens early, election day is March 4, early voting starts today. Get out there and vote! In SO many of the races, the district is so heavily one party or another that the Primary IS the election. If you wait until November to let your voice be heard, and think that just voting straight GOP ticket is enough – you’ve let someone else make your decision for you. Don’t like the current state of the GOP? It’s the PRIMARY where you can have some say in the matter.

It’s the Primary where you choose your party officials, the guys or gals who will REALLY pull the levers of power for the next few years. It’s the PRIMARY where you can upgrade from a moderate to a conservative GOP candidate. If your district is run by a moderate who

has been in office forever and who seems to go his own way, go vote for the guy running against him. That incumbent will probably still win, but if he sees his margin of victory is narrower, and that there’s a groundswell of opposition, he might change his behavior. Don’t ever stop fighting, don’t ever stop letting your voice be heard. Make sure you are speaking in a language they understand – VOTES.

If you’ve got some other good resources, I’d love to know, and I’ll update this post. It’s RIDICULOUSLY hard to figure out who to vote for in the primaries. SO many races!

And I took to G+ to remind you to take your photo ID, and let you know that Eric Holder still thinks you’re a racist. Mostly because you’re Texan and have the audacity to think you don’t need him and his dumb Washington control freaks. Go vote, it’s like poking your finger in Eric Holder’s eye!

You’ll notice that the Comptroller race doesn’t have a recommendation on the HRBC slate mentioned by Michael Berry. I admit to not having researched this one myself, either. However, and it’s a BIG however, my friend Felicia Cravens is working for the Debra Medina campaign. Felicia founded the Houston Tea Party, substitute hosts on Houston AM Radio sometimes, is Editor-in-Chief at Free Radical Network, and if SHE supprorts Debra Medina for Comptroller, that’s really good enough for me!